Over the last few years, one of the more common complaints I've heard about Smalltalk is "not enough developers". Now that an analyst group has shot down that argument (in an SDTimes discussion about dynamic language adoption focused on Ruby Python, and PHP), can we put that one to bed?

Goulde and Hammond predicted that finding developers will not be too difficult. While they both conceded that, currently, dynamic language developers are commanding a premium price for their services, it is also possible to retrain existing developers to use these languages.

"There’s a lot of skill transfer across these languages. It’s not like you’re working in a totally different environment. They have enough similarities that developers pick it up pretty quickly," said Goulde. "These guys have worked with multiple languages for years. They try to use the best language for the purpose at hand. They’re not, by any stretch, skills limited to one language."

Unless you went out of your way to hire illiterate developers, having them learn something new should not be a problem.

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